On November 9, 1910, the Harbin area suddenly broke out into plague, and the first plague was in Fujiadian (present-day Daowai District). The plague was introduced to Manchuria from Tsarist Siberia, and soon extended to Harbin, endangering the entire northeast territory, the epidemic was serious and spread rapidly, with an average of more than 50 deaths per day in the city, up to 183 deaths a day. This was the first plague that occurred in Harbin.
After the plague was introduced to China from Manchuria on October 17, it spread to Zalantun in more than ten days. On the morning of November 9, a Chinese worker who had come to Harbin from Manchuria from Manchuria three days earlier had Chinese died of plague in his house in the house where majiagou middle east railway workers lived in Qinjiagang (Nangang).
In early November 1910, Fu Jiadian was only reporting one or two cases of infected people every day, and by mid-December there were 4 to 10 people per day, and by late December it had increased to hundreds. Because the number of infected people increased so rapidly that professional quarantine personnel were unable to examine each case in person, after being informed by the patient's family, they had to rely on temporarily hired people with no experience in epidemic prevention to go to screening, and then transfer those who were considered infected to the isolation camp. To evade police inspections and mandatory disinfection, some families of patients dump their bodies on the street at night. The next morning, the police collected the bodies, placed them in thin wooden coffins, and buried them in mass graves. If the patient dies at home, the family can be transported outside the city for burial without anyone asking. Nurses, caregivers, disinfectors and burial workers who were temporarily recruited were all required to wear protective clothing and masks, but they all ignored them, and the masks were hung around their necks and not worn, resulting in many people being infected.
This rare plague eventually claimed the lives of 60,000 people and cost ten million taels of silver. Among them, more than 6,000 people died of plague in Fujiadian, Harbin, accounting for a quarter of the total population of Fujiadian at that time. This is the first time in human history that scientific means have been used to successfully control infectious diseases in densely populated large cities.
Let us remember - Wu Liande, "the founder of modern Chinese medicine". He established the General Administration of Epidemic Prevention in Harbin, founded the Chinese Medical Journal, founded the Chinese Medical Association, and built more than 20 medical schools, including the modern Beijing Central Hospital (the predecessor of Peking University People's Hospital) and the Harbin Medical College (the predecessor of Harbin Medical University). He performed the first human dissection by a Chinese doctor. He first proposed the concept of "pneumonic plague" in the world. He presided over China's first large-scale burning of the bodies of plague victims. He designed China's first mask (known as the "Wu's mask"). He was the first promoter in China to use masks to prevent infectious diseases.
